Avatar up for 11 at Visual Effect Awards

The Oscar build-up rolls on...

The Visual Effect Society have annouced their nominations for this year's best special effects in film, tv, animation, commercials and video games.

On the film front, Avatar is leading the pack with eleven nods.

In the Visual Effects in a Visual Effects Driven Feature Motion Picture category, Avatar is up against blockbuster behemoths 2012, Star Trek and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen , with the plucky underdog nomination going to District 9 .

Avatar is up for two awards in the Best Single Visual Effect category, for Neytiri's drinking scene and Quarich's escape.

The other movies up for Best Single Visual Effect are 2012's Escape From L.A. scene, Knowing's Plane Crash, and Terminator Salvation's VLA Escape.

The Animation award is another hotly contested category.

Nine , Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs , Coralin e, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Up are the toons looking to take the prize.

The road to the Oscars is paved with success at other ceremonies, and whoever takes home a VES award on the 28th February will be feeling ever so slightly hopeful about their chances in March.

After Avatar scooped the Golden Globes for Best Drama and Best Director at the weekend, the momentum is building behind James Cameron to take the Academy Awards by storm.

And things are looking up for Avatar already. Cameron has been named as the recipient of the VES' Lifetime Achievement Award.